Lacy (4 page)

His chest expanded roughly. "George can
damned well go hang!"

"If you won't, I'll let him," she
threatened. Her eyes sparkled with the challenge. Let him sweat for a change.
Let him wonder and worry. "I'll stay right here, and—"

"Damn you!" His dark eyebrows seemed
to meet in the middle as he glared at her. "Damn you, Lacy!"

"You can close your eyes and think of England," she whispered mischievously, because this was fun. The idea of seducing Cole
and making him enjoy it was the most delicious fun she'd had in eight long
months. And if there was a little revenge mixed up in it, so what?The thought
of luring him into her bed, of tempting and tantalizing him, was delightful,
especially now that she knew it was unlikely to be painful a second time.
Untold pleasures lay in store for both of them, if she could bluff him.

He muttered something under his breath, finished
his cigarette, and slammed it into the fireplace. "Damn you!" he
repeated.

She moved around in front of him, making him
look at her. "Why did you come to me that night if you didn't want
me?"

"I did... want you," he bit off.

"And now you don't?"

Oh, God. She was killing him by inches! His body
felt like drawn cord. What she was demanding was impossible, but he couldn't
let her carry out her threat. The thought of Lacy with any other man cut his
heart. He drew a deep breath. He couldn't show weakness, not now.

Attack was the best defense. He lifted his face
and glared down at her. "Sex is a weapon women use," he said coldly.
"My grandfather taught me to live without it."

"Your grandfather almost succeeded in
making a slab of stone out of you!" she shot back.

"Caring is a weakness," he said
shortly. "It's a disease. I won't be owned by any damned woman—much less a
society girl from Georgia with a fat wallet!"

Her face blanched. Her fists clenched at her
sides. So it was going to be war. All right. He was asking for it.

"Nevertheless," she said tautly,
"if you want me to come back, you'll have to share a room with me. I'm not
going to have the family laughing at me a second time. You don't even have to
touch me, Cole," she conceded, hoping proximity might accomplish what
blackmail couldn't. "But you are going to have to share my room. If you
want me back..." she added calculatingly. "And I think you need me—at
least to help you cope with Katy. Don't you?"

"Haven't you any pride, woman?"

"No. I gave it up the day I married
you," she told him. "My pride, my self-respect, and my hopes of a
rosy future. If you want me back, I'll come. But on my terms."

His eyes were fierce, black as coal. He drew in
a slow, deep breath. "Your terms," he said curtly. "Blackmail,
you mean."

He looked so formidable that she almost backed
down. Then she remembered how she'd learned to treat George when he got out of
hand. She wondered absently if it might work on stone?

She moved a little closer, coquettishly, and
deliberately batted her long eyelashes at him. "Kiss me, you fool!"
she said vampishly, lifting her face and parting her red lips.

He stared down at her through narrowed eyes and
hoped like hell she wouldn't notice the sudden thunder of his heartbeat at that
innocent teasing. "Stop that "he said irritably, giving nothing away.
"All right," he said, with a rough sigh, "we'll share a
room."

"Finally, a chink in the stone!" She
sighed, smiling wickedly, and he actually seemed to soften a little. Miracle of
miracles! Had she accidentally hit on a way to get to him?

He scowled at her for another few seconds, half
irritated, half intrigued by this new Lacy. He pursed his lips and almost
smiled down at the picture she made. "I'll pick you up in the morning at
seven." He glanced toward the hall. "You'd better send that pack of
coyotes home."

She curtsied. "Yes, Your Worship!"

"Lacy
..."
he said warningly.

"You're so handsome when you're mad,"
she sighed.

The scowl got worse. He actually seemed to
vibrate, and she felt a fever of pleasure that she could knock him off-balance.
If he were vulnerable, there might be a little hope. Eight months, wasted;
years wasted—and now she'd discovered the way to reach him!

"Good night," he said firmly.

She gave him an impish little grin.
"Wouldn't you like to stay the night?"

"I would not," he said shortly.

"Then enjoy your last night alone,"
she said, with a gleam in her blue eyes. She turned and walked away, on legs
that could hardly hold her. And she was laughing when she reached the room
where the party was still in full swing.

But the man letting himself out the front door
wasn't laughing. He never should have agreed to her terms. He should have told
her to take them and go to hell. Only he was so hungry for the sight of her
that his mind had stopped working. It was probably all bluff on her part, about
sleeping with that tall clown. But how could he risk it? By God, he'd beat the
man to death if he so much as touched her!

The violence of his feelings disturbed him. She
was just a woman, just Lacy, who'd been around so long she was like the flowers
his mother always put on the hall table. But things had been different since
that night with her. He hadn't meant to touch her. The marriage had been
forced; he'd been determined to find some way to drive her from the ranch
without ever consummating it. And then he'd started kissing her, and one thing
had led to another. He wasn't sorry, except for hurting her. It had been magic.
But it was too big a risk to

 How in hell was he going to share a room with
her and keep his secret? In that intimacy, which he'd avoided for years even
with his men, how could he keep her from finding out?

He'd lose her when she knew, he thought. That
hadn't bothered him at first, but he'd had too much time to think. He'd missed
her. He'd wanted her. Avoiding her hadn't worked. He'd tried that, eight
months' worth, and tonight was the first time he'd felt alive since she'd left
him. He sighed. Well, he'd take it one day at a time. That was what Turk always
said: Stop gulping life down in a swallow. So maybe he'd try that. As he left
the house, the look in his eyes was as grim as rain, as hopeless as dead
flowers on a grave.

Chapter Two

Lacy sat down heavily in the wing chair, still
reeling from her demands and Cole's reluctant agreement to them. She'd been
bluffing, but fortunately he didn't know that. Imagine, she thought, shy little
Lacy Jarrett actually winning one over Coleman Whitehall. The gin had helped,
of course. She still wasn't used to it, and it had gone to her head. Also, she
mused, to her tongue.

Back in the old days, she would have been too
shy to even speak to him. Her eyes closed and she drifted back to those first,
nerve-wracking days at Spanish Flats following the death of her parents.

Katy had been welcoming, like Marion and Ben.
But Cole had been formal, distant, and almost hostile to her. She'd made a
habit of keeping out of his way, so quiet when he was at the table for meals
that she seemed invisible. It didn't help that she started falling in love with
him almost at once.

There had been rare times when he was less
antagonistic. Once, he'd helped her save a kitten from a stray dog. He'd placed
the tiny thing in her hands and his eyes had held hers for so long that she
blushed furiously and was only able to stammer her thanks. When she'd gotten
sick from being out in the sun without her bonnet, it was Cole who'd carried
her inside to her bed, who'd hovered despite Marion and Katy's ministrations
until he was certain that she was all right. Occasionally he'd been home when
Lacy went for the quiet walks she enjoyed so much, and he'd fallen into step
beside her, pointing out crops and explaining the cattle business to her.
Eventually she lost much of her fear of him, but he disturbed her so much when
he came close that she couldn't quite hide it.

Her reactions seemed to make him irritable, as
if he didn't understand that it was physical attraction and not fear that
caused them. Cole didn't go to parties, and Lacy had never known him to keep
company with a woman. He worked from dawn until well after dark, overseeing
every phase of ranch operation, even keeping the books and handling the
mounting paperwork. He had a good business head, but he also had all the
responsibility. It didn't leave much time for recreation.

The blow came when war broke out in Europe. Everyone was sure that America would eventually become involved, and Lacy found
herself worrying constantly that Cole would have to go. He was young and strong
and patriotic. Even if he weren't called up, it was inevitable that he would
volunteer. His conversation about the news items in the papers told her that.

Aviation, the new science, was one of his
consuming interests. He talked about airplanes as some boys talked about girls.
He read everything he could find on the subject. Lacy was his only willing
audience, soaking up the information he imparted enthusiastically —even while
she prayed that the flying fever wouldn't take him over to France, where American boys were flocking to join the Lafayette Escadrille.

But America's entry into the war in April, 1917,
smashed Lacy's dreams. Cole enlisted and requested service with the fledgling
Army Air Service. He'd wanted to volunteer for the famous Lafayette Escadrille
a year earlier, along with other American pilots attached to the French Flying
Corps. But the death of his father and the weight of responsibility for his mother
and sister and brother—not to mention Lacy—put paid to that idea. However, when
President Wilson announced American participation in the war, Cole immediately
signed up. He found neighbors willing to handle ranch chores for him while his
mother and Lacy assumed the duty of keeping the books, and Cole packed to leave
for France.

He and Lacy had begun to enjoy a closer
relationship, even if it was still tense and tentative. But the knowledge that
he was going to war and might never come back had a devastating effect on
Lacy's pride. She burst into tears and was inconsolable. Even Cole, who'd
misinterpreted her nervousness before, finally realized what her feelings for
him were.

She passed by his room the morning he was
dressing to leave— and was shocked when he dragged her inside and closed the
door.

His shirt was completely unbuttoned down the
front, hanging loose over his elegant dress slacks. He seemed taller, bigger,
in disarray, and Lacy eyes went shyly over the expanse of tanned muscular chest
with its thick, dark covering of body hair.

"You cried," he said, without
preamble, and his dark eyes held hers mercilessly.

There was little use in denying it. He saw too
deeply. "I suppose you have to go?" she asked miserably.

"This is my country, Lacy," he said
simply. "It would be the essence of cowardice to refuse to fight for
it." His strong, brown hands held her upper arms firmly. "Haven't you
heard anything I've said about air power, about the edge it would give us on
the Hun if we could assist the French Lafayette Escadrille in developing
it?"

"Why the French?" she asked absently.
The scent of him, the closeness of him, made her dizzy with pleasure. She only
wanted to prolong it.

"Because the American air corps has no
planes of its own," he said simply. "We'll be flying Nieuports and
Sopwiths." "Flying is dangerous..." she began.

"Life is dangerous, Lacy," he replied
quietly. He looked at her soft mouth with its dark lip rouge. Absently he
reached up and smudged it with his thumb, smiling as the bloodred color
transferred itself from her lower lip to his skin. "Like being
branded," he teased. "I could use this war paint on my cattle."

"It washes off," Lacy pointed out.

"Does it?" He reached in his pocket
for his handkerchief and, holding her firmly by the nape of her neck with his
free hand, proceeded to wipe off every trace of it.

"Cole, don't!" she protested, trying
to turn her head.

"I'm not wearing that stain to the train
station," he replied, his mind on what he was doing, not what he was
saying.

But Lacy went quite still, her wide eyes
unblinking on his hard, dark face. "W—what?"

He smiled with faint indulgence as he finished
his task and tossed the handkerchief into his dresser. "You heard
me." His gaze went over her soft oval face, from her short dark hair to
her big blue eyes and down her straight little nose to the bow mouth he'd wiped
clean. "This might have been unthinkable before. But I don't know when
I'll come back again. Isn't it permissible for a patriotic lad to be sent off
with a kiss?"